


scavenger

by brophigenia



Series: that boy is a monster [4]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Discussion of Genocide, Kylo Ren: Space Widower, M/M, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Sex Work, Post-Canon, Space Husbands, discussion of hosnian system, was there ever going to be a happy ending? probably not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-11-07 08:06:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11054820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brophigenia/pseuds/brophigenia
Summary: let it be knownthat I was worthyI was worthy, I was





	scavenger

**Author's Note:**

> So, here we go. Part IV of the series. Winding up to Part V. Setting the stage. Killing off main characters. Was this ever going to end well? No. Let me know if it sucks. Warnings for mentions of past sex work for survival, discussion of the destruction of the Hosnian System, major character death, and, as always, Snoke lurking in the background. 
> 
> Sorry if the way I refer to Kylo is odd, I'm working under the assumption that "Kylo Ren" isn't really a name but a title, so I call him the Knight a lot. If you read jedikiller, you know that my Kylo has got some major identity issues. 
> 
> Let me know if it sucks. Summary from Two Door Cinema Club, opening quote from Cobra Starship.

_ i was buried alive, i came back to haunt you _ _   
_ _ i was lost from the start, i did what i had to  _

Hux knows he’s no longer a man. 

_ There exists a tipping point between gods and monsters,  _ he remembers reading in a book a touch more fanciful than his usual nonfiction fare, and he wonders, late into a day’s cycle when it’s just him and the transparisteel viewports, just him and the  _ Finalizer  _ and thousands of creatures lying in wait for his command, if he’s passed that point yet. 

There were scores of children on each of the planets he had destroyed-- innocents. There were probably hundreds of skinny wraiths with bands of bruises and unsteady gaits who would have reminded him of his own younger years. There were people who had never done him any direct harm, or even  _ indirect  _ harm. 

He wonders if he regrets what he’s done-- it makes him breathless in more ways than one to consider the breadth of the destruction he has wrought. Not just excitement but fear, too-- something he’d thought long stamped out of his being by one too many cigarras stubbed out on the fleshy skin of his wrists and underbelly, by one too many blasters pushed against the back of his skull by some sweating beast rutting away at his back and calling  _ him  _ disgusting. He fears himself and his own capabilities-- if he can cause the deaths of so many, what  _ wouldn’t  _ he do? 

_ It could have been worse,  _ he knows. He repeats it to himself during his post-shift showers. No one died suffering. There was a flash of light, of heat, and then they were all dead. There was no prolonged agony. Even the ones who  _ deserved  _ prolonged agony did not receive it. Everyone died an equal in the Hosnian System, regardless of how they lived. Is a quick death equal to years spent starving and hurting and trembling only when he was certain no one could see? Is it arrogance to cause so much destruction because of the misfortunes that befell him as a youth? 

Is he sorry? Would he have, if he could, saved the innocents? 

Is there such a thing as a  _ true  _ innocent? Every being in the galaxy will do someone harm one day, he knows this to be true. Was his destruction of all those innocents merely a preemptive death sentence carried out for crimes that had yet to be (and now would never be) committed? 

His hands shake when he thinks about it, if he’s been awake for too long. 

After Starkiller is destroyed, he leads his forces through maneuvers more guerilla than they’d previously attempted. Diversionary tactics and creeping roundabout attacks and raids. He drinks two fingers of good Corellian rum every night after he starts to taste it on his tongue in his dreams. He’d never had it before, but he woke up seven mornings in a row to the memory of lying lush and decadent in high grass under a hot sun with a bottle of the stuff practically soldered to his lips, dressed in thick, clumsily-woven black wool garments, skin tacky with blood and viscera, drunk more on the heat and half-sated bloodlust than the liquor. The seventh morning, he’d decided enough was enough and added it to his weekly supply order. 

Their resident Knight is to blame, but Hux doesn’t mention it during any of their late-night rendezvous. 

From the beginning, Kylo Ren seemed so young-- younger than Hux, even though they’re of an age, and yet sometimes he seems a thousand years old, like a carved statue guarding the entrance to some forgotten ruin of a mystical tomb. Usually he’s youthful though, and tender like an expensive steak, blood-hot with rage and lust and  _ earnestness.  _ If Hux could, he’d keep him tied to the bed in his quarters, call him another indulgence, another privilege worthy of a General, worthy of a god (or a monster.) It’s how he justifies keeping Millicent, having a shower with the capability to dispense actual water and not just perform a sonic cleaning, having his uniforms made of the finest wools and cottons he can source. Hux grew up spare, grew up too-thin and taking up as little space as possible, eating just enough to keep his organ systems from shutting down. Clothes were cut with not an extra inch of fabric along their seams, boots were worn until they were more hole than shod. Now he reviles the danger of too much extravagance-- and yet he craves those mundane things that were once denied him. 

Kylo Ren is a study in excesses. Excessive features, excessive body-- he takes up so much  _ room,  _ even beyond that which he physically inhabits. He moves like a juggernaut, like he will go where he will and nothing could stop him. His moans are all lushly drawn out things-- he has never known sexually-motivated violence. Hux can tell that from the first time that Ren’s hands alight upon his bare skin. To Ren, this is something revolutionary-- this is a part of his rebellion from his upbringing, from his family’s legacy in the light. 

Kylo Ren is a celebration of greed, and yet Hux does not hate him. He is all want when it comes to the man-- he is all tooth-aching lust at the very thought of the Knight’s long, wide back and the softness of his hair twined up in Hux’s bare fingers, nevermind the slurping, messy eagerness of that outsized and over-generous mouth wrapped around his cock.  

The Knight sometimes curls around his legs like an affectionate, touch-starved animal after he's found completion, and the link between their minds stays open, thoughts passing between them. It ought to scare Hux, or upset him, but it doesn't-- for all that he's the Master of the Knights of Ren, the man is surprisingly decent underneath, guileless. And that's the trick, Hux supposes-- to be open with your desires. Kylo Ren is no artifice; he lies curled around Hux’s legs and imagines elaborate scenarios where they abscond off to some Naboo-esque planet to spend the rest of their days as gentlemen moisture farmers,  _ making love _ every day and reading novels and subsisting on a mostly plant-based diet, supplemented with that damned Corellian rum. He conveniently forgets, those moments, that they are not the sort of men, the sort of  _ beings _ , to be content with such a life. 

_ I could be content,  _ the Knight attempts to convince him with the language of Hux’s own thoughts,  _ you are all the darkness I need.  _

It is a lie, but a sweet one, and Hux has experienced so little sweetness in his life that he allows it. It is intoxicating, Kylo Ren’s obsession. His  _ devotion.  _ He mixes derision with destruction with poetry with hands and lips that don't strive to cause pain, and Hux is outmatched. Unable to resist. 

The night before they go to attack the Resistance’s main hub of supplies, Hux is agitated. He can't sleep, the air around him stifling and too obviously recycled through filters. He keeps remembering little details of his life, unable to put them aside. He remembers the smell of his mother’s homemade perfume, hand-crushed jasmine and violets smeared into a paste and left to dry on her inner wrists and against her jugular, the mess of petals falling off once the scent transfer was through. He remembers the first time he sold his body, his  _ legacy _ , to someone, how he got by on bravado but vomited three times on the way back to the other boys and their fathers and  _ his  _ father. He remembers his father’s baffled but proud but  _ envious  _ look when Hux entered the Supreme Leader’s receiving cave a half-starved bastard whore and exited it the General of the First Order’s forces.

Mitaka gives him Ren’s location without having to be asked twice, a bland expression permanently fixed to his face. 

He kisses the man, surprises him, after he actually knocks on the door to his quarters and Ren actually answers, like they're ordinary people. 

The Knight makes a noise like he's  _ dying _ , like the end has come and he is unmanned by it-- he sounds like he's having some sort of religious experience, and it's a heady thing. Hux  _ aches  _ at the sound, shoves his hand past ragged black robes and inside form-fitting leggings to wrap his fingers around the turgid length he finds there. It's another place where Kylo Ren is all excess, ridiculous and perfect, thick and veined with a lushly shaped tip, and if Hux thought he could do it and still feel like himself, he'd go to his knees and put the thing down his throat. 

He doesn't, because he can't, he  _ can't _ , but he can do this. He can press Kylo Ren, Master of the Knights of Ren, into the wall of his own quarters and suck on his lower lip until it's bruised and make him say  _ Hux Hux Hux anything anything-- swear, swear to me--  _ all hoarse pleas, broken open to expose the void inside his eyes, the emptiness that makes him so greedy. 

Hux can have this. He can make the Master of the Knights of Ren, the most powerful being in the galaxy ( _ and it must be true, it must-- Snoke wouldn't have wasted his time puppeteering the boy that would become this beast of a man unless he  _ was  _ the most imminent threat, the only thing that could've defeated him _ ) beg for him. He can peel back the man’s mask and see him for what he truly is. 

_ Oh, you're--  _ Hux spits out and isn't sure what he means to say to complete the phrase, but their minds are twined around each other and the Knight hears  _ beautiful/mine/filthy/precious/not alone/perfect  _ and a million other things and he comes with his eyes rolling back in his head and his hands pressing Hux closer to him so he can lay their hearts side by side, coax them to beat at the same tempo. A symphony. He hasn't heard music since he was a child. 

_ I would burn down the galaxy for you _ , he maybe whispers and maybe just thinks, but either way it's true. The Knight wants, sometimes, for there to be some escape for them, some place that's lush and green and alive, where no one has heard either of their names. A place for them to lay abed for hours together and grow soft-bodied, rusty in the art of destruction and desolation and misery,  _ old.  _ He wonders what it would be like to grow old and knows in every cell of his body that he's never going to find out. 

The next day, they proceed with the plan of attack, unaware of the Resistance’s plan to send their Jedi to thwart them. 

The scavenger is carrying Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber. 

The  _ Finalizer _ is in melee, Hux barking orders to the few crew members left alive and mostly upright after the explosive device hidden by another traitorous Stormtrooper detonated in the middle of their battle formation synchronizations. He's bleeding from a cut on his temple and Kylo can feel his pain and his anger from two floors away, headed to the bridge even as his awareness is flooded with the presence of his uncle. 

The scavenger attempts to take control of the bridge, untrained with a lightsaber yet, for all of her intuition and raw potential. She's still trying to _control_ the Force, instead of merging herself with it. 

Hux snarls and says  _ something _ , steps forward, and the scavenger is all wide eyes at the way the darkness curls around his ankles and crackles in the air around him. She trembles and she stabs him in the chest.

_ Master Luke didn’t prepare her for this,  _ she thinks hysterically, and Kylo Ren can hear it, can taste her revulsion and her panic. Her mind is gaping open in her shock and Hux’s is soft around the edges and he’s in both of their minds all at once. He’s everywhere and he’s  _ running,  _ knocking down Stormtroopers with his body as he rushes past them, hand clenched so tight on the hilt of his saber that he thinks it’ll shatter. 

_I’ve killed him I’ve killed him I’ve killed him,_ her mind revolves the thought on repeat and she’s nauseous and this is the first person she has ever killed, no matter that he’s breathing yet and her lightsaber is out of his chest and he’s still intensely _alive._ He’s going to die, and she can feel that, too. He is gasping and there is so much _damage_ and she’s pressed her back against the far wall, as far away from him as she can get in the control room they’re cloistered in. There’s something wrong with the vents and the air is thick and muggy and hot. Despite this, Hux shivers like they’re on Hoth.  

The room is red with the glow of the lightsaber that Kylo Ren slashes through its jammed doors, and Rey abruptly realizes that she’s probably going to die in this room, with this man that she’s murdered. She expects immediate decapitation or _worse,_ and is surprised faintly at the back of her mind when the Master of the Knights of Ren falls to his knees next to the fallen General.  

_Oh,_ he says, and she is intensely uncomfortable with the sight of his unmasked face, at the softness in it. That’s what struck her the first time she saw him without the helmet-- the emotion scrawled across his features, the earnestness in his eyes and the quiet burr of his voice when it was just the two of them alone. This is the same sort of murmur, far and away from the screams of _Traitor!_ in the snowy woods that night when Finn fell.  

She breathes shallowly and stares at them; the General is thin and pale and shaking and  _ furious,  _ and he reaches up a fine-boned hand to clench his fist around a handful of battle-frayed black wool. They hold eye contact, and Hux says  _ Ren… Ren!  _ like he’s trying to say something else but doesn’t have the words to do it. A black-gloved hand the size of a speeder hubcap strokes through his sweaty hair and then, more tenderly than Rey has ever heard anyone speak to anyone or anything else in her entire life, Kylo Ren murmurs  _ Hux  _ and it sounds like a promise. 

The General of the First Order dies silently on his back in an anonymous room on a starship, and Rey is cold all over. She tries to edge her way to the door, even though there’s no way she can do it without getting past him. She doesn’t feel like a Jedi-- she never did, really, but even less so now. Now she feels like a child who’s just broken a priceless family heirloom from carelessness. Like she did something that she regrets because it’s irreversible. She’s killed someone.  

Like he hears the thought, Kylo Ren’s head snaps up and he is all flat eyes, like his mind has fled far away. The first time they met eyes, she was disgusted by the pain in them. She thought it was perverse, a parody of humanity; a monster made even more frightening by his magnetism. 

This is worse. 

He rises like a marionette, unfolding himself from his crouch. He’s so big-- it seems improbably, how  _ big  _ he is, round-shouldered and long-limbed. Rey is small. Her bones are brittle from years of improper nutrition delivered from ration sachets in the deserts of Jakku. She would break easily under those gloved hands the size of speeder hubcaps. His right hand opens and his lightsaber flies into it immediately; there was no concentration needed in the move. He just _did it_.  _ You need a teacher,  _ he’d said to her once. She thought she’d found one in Luke, who had instilled in her the double-talking wisdom of the Jedi and told her to keep the saber she’d gone so far to bring back to him. He’d said  __ don’t think, just do.   
__   
(He’d seemed not quite right, the whole time she’d known him-- she’d been denying it, denying her skepticism, but now she knows it’s true, standing woefully unprepared in the face of what looks like certain death.) 

Kylo Ren moves like he wasn’t born but created. He moves like there is nothing else in the galaxy he knows how to do except for fight,  _ kill.  _ Maybe that’s true. She’d thought him a berserker, once, but then she realized that he’s  _ always  _ in control of the Force. He’s entrenched in it; she can coax it, can wield its power, but it thickens the air around him and embraces him at all hours of the day. 

She watches him power on his weapon, the crackling red glow casting nightmarish shadows on his face, and she stands still and holds the hilt of her borrowed saber with both hands-- braces herself. 

Every connection of their blades sends her back a step, makes her whole body burn bright with pain. She  _ trembles,  _ and she thinks about Finn, about the thick scar on his back and the sweat on his brow whenever he trains, the way his back pains him always. She thinks about Poe, too-handsome with haunted eyes. She thinks about the General, and her steel-wrought backbone and the way she’s like a ghost-- a particularly tenacious ghost, but transparent nonetheless. 

_ He did all of that,  _ she thinks as she stares into his eyes, the heat from their sabers making her face slick with sweat. It stings when it drips past her eyelashes and her arms shake as he  _ pushes.  _ He could probably tear her apart with his mind, she thinks. He could crush her skull in one hand. He's holding himself back.  _ A weapon for a more civilized age,  _ someone whispers quietly in her mind like a memory, and she wants to laugh as much as she wants to weep when Luke takes this moment to sweep in the door. 

“Ben,” he says, and Kylo Ren’s teeth are bared and his eyes are dead and he looks  _ nothing  _ like the holoportrait in the General’s quarters. He steps back sharply, twitches his wrist to disarm her like it’s nothing. When he turns to face Luke it’s with that blank absence of light in his eyes. Only that is the same as the holoportrait, carefully labeled  _ Ben Solo, age 7  _ in the General’s delicate script. 

Rey watches them size each other up. On the floor, General Hux’s corpse lies stiller than nature, eyes closed and lips parted a bit. He could be sleeping, except he’s not. 

Her hands shake; she clenches them into fists and waits. 


End file.
